Friends, in my evangelical work online, I often encounter people who are skeptical of religion and dismissive of its claims. I usually ask them: How do we explain the intelligibility of the world or our ability to understand it? How about objective values and our ability to recognize them? Our first reading from 1 Kings reflects, I think, a great breakthrough in Western consciousness about how we’re able to identify right and wrong—just as we’re able to identify patterns in the physical world.

Friends, on this Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, I want to focus on the Second Reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The eighth chapter of Romans represents the culmination of an argument Paul’s been making, and the reading for today is the rhetorical high point of that conclusion. This is the first great theologian of the Church naming what is essential to Christianity—so we have to pay attention!

Friends, we come to the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, and we’re going to finish our reading of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, which deals with the parables. Jesus’s parables cut to the heart of the matter and convey the truth of the kingdom, and the two we hear today—the parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl—are really good examples. Both are about the summum bonum, the highest good, and therefore about what’s most fundamental in the spiritual life. Indeed, this is life itself; this is what it’s all about!

Friends, we continue this weekend reading from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, which is dedicated to the parables of Jesus. Today I want to focus on the thought-provoking and theologically rich parable of the wheat and the weeds. A man sows good seed on his field, and while he’s asleep, an enemy sows weeds among the wheat. But the man resists the impulse to pull them up, as it might uproot the wheat too: “Let them grow together until harvest.” This parable is getting at something very deep, and it has to do with the presence of evil in our world—and why God permits it.

Friends, on this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we continue our reading of the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter 13, Jesus gives a series of seven very memorable parables, the first four having to do with the growth of the kingdom of God. The first of these, which we’re reading from today, is the parable of the sower. What do we hear? That it’s never a question of God being reticent or holding back his grace. The problem comes from our side: We block the Word of God, setting up obstacles to it that prevent it from taking root. There’s the drama, if you want, of the spiritual life.

Friends, on this Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our first reading is from the prophet Zechariah, who is a very important figure for the Lord Jesus. The prophet predicts the arrival of a king, meek and riding on a donkey—a king who will “proclaim peace to the nations” and extend his dominion “to the ends of the earth.” This strange text from the ancient world has been fulfilled in our hearing and in our sight.

Friends, we’re reading this week again from the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, and Christ’s teaching here is—as always—astonishing: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” Jesus says to his apostles, “and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” There are points of overlap with Jesus’s teachings in all the great religions of the world—but there’s nothing like this.

Friends, Jesus cannot be reduced to just one ethical teacher among many. But this doesn’t mean that his teaching isn’t important or astonishing—because it is! And I want to focus this week, and next, on our Gospel readings from the tenth chapter of Matthew. As Jesus sends his disciples on mission, he gives them, and us, a wonderful instruction in the spiritual life. What we hear, as I say, is astonishing—and if you allow it to sink in, it will change your life.

Friends, on this Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Gospel is about Jesus sending the Twelve on a mission. Whenever we hear about the Twelve, it’s the Church in seminal form. And here’s what I want to focus on: Whom does Jesus call to be his apostles? Not the best and brightest people of his time but fairly ordinary and even compromised characters. Yet Jesus sees something in every one of them—some gift, virtue, or capacity needed in the life of the Church.

Friends, we’ve come to the great Solemnity of Corpus Christi—a celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Our first reading mentions the “manna” that fed the Israelites in the desert—a mysterious bread from heaven described in the book of Exodus. This is then correlated to the Eucharist, the bread from heaven that Jesus gives us, in our Gospel from the sixth chapter of John. I want to explore four dimensions of this relationship between manna and the Eucharist.